Butterfly Smiles
by Andramion
Summary: sequel to It Hurts, part of the Prosthetic AU Hinata's little sister comes over to watch his volleyball practice.


**Butterfly Smiles**

(sequel to It Hurts)

* * *

><p>"Thank you, coach!"<p>

"It's no problem." Hinata smiles and nods before he leaves to get his water bottle from the cooler at the side of the court, where the rest of the team is taking a break from practice too.

"Did you work it out?" Kageyama asks him when he lifts his bottle up to his lips. Hinata nods before taking a sip.

"Coach said it was fine, so I'm glad."

"Hey, hey," Nishinoya appears by Hinata's side, slapping him on the shoulder in the process. "What are you two talking about?"

Kageyama lifts an eyebrow and answers before Hinata manages to. He points his thumb at the redhead. "His sibling's gonna visit our practice this Wednesday."

"Eeeeeeh, Shouyou, you have a sibling?" As usual, Nishinoya's loud voice resonates in the gym and the other players pick up on the conversation. "Woah, is it a brother? A sister?"

"I bet it's an older sister, right Hinata? Is it?" Tanaka has joined them and is rubbing his chin as he fantasises about it. "A beautiful older sister, huh, you should introduce her to me."

"No way, it's obvious it's a cool older brother!" Karasuno's libero immediately interjects, facing Tanaka and pointing at Hinata over his shoulder. "Don't you see how he reacts when he sees something cool? He obviously has a brother he looks up to!"

The team's captain and vice-captain follow the discussion from a little distance away, entertained with the two second-years' speculation.

"Wouldn't it be funny if it was a younger brother?" Sugawara chuckles. "I can imagine another little Hinata running around in this gym in a few years."

"Heh, I don't think the coach would be able to deal with two Hinata's on one team though."

By then, the argument between Nishinoya and Tanaka has come to a standstill and they are both looking at Hinata for an answer.

"Ah, it's a little sister, actually," he answers the two of them. "She just entered elementary school this year. She's 6."

"Huh.." Nishinoya straightens up and cocks his head. "So why is she visiting practice?"

At the question, Hinata looks at the ground and shuffles his feet. He knows that his teammates won't act strange around him if he tells them, but it's still hard to talk to them about his disability. Even though the way they treat him hasn't changed since that rainy day, he hesitates to talk about hospital visits, because those make it sound like he's not doing alright.

He lets out the breath he'd been holding and glances at Kageyama, who nods to encourage him. "I have… a check-up at the hospital Wednesday after practice. I-I'm fine!" he adds as soon as he sees worried looks on his teammates' faces. "They just like to keep up with my growth so they can see whether my… my prosthetic is the right size, that's all…" He looks at the wall to his side before he shakes the uneasy feeling and starts talking about his sister.

"Natsu – ah, that's my little sister's name – she's got a school trip to a place close to here that day… and since my mum will be picking me up from school, Natsu thought she could drive to the hospital with us. So she said she wanted to wait at my school and watch me play volleyball while we wait for mum."

"Well, we'll just have to be on our best game that day to show her how fucking cool Karasuno is!"

"Tanaka." The second year stiffens when he feels a hand on his shoulder and hears the captain's voice next to him. "That means no swearing on Wednesday either, okay?"

_He's even scarier when he smiles like that,_ Hinata thinks to himself. Then, Sawamura's comment makes him think of something else.

"Tsukishima!" he calls out and the tall blond turns his head towards the group gathered by the cooler. Hinata walks over and stops right in front of him, his stance wide and his hands on his hips. "You're mean! You'd better be nice to my sister, or I'll kick you in the face!"

Instead of being intimidated, Tsukishima just chuckles and smirks at the smaller boy. "I would take it as a threat if you could actually _reach_ my face."

Hinata puffs his cheeks up and glares at a giggling Yamaguchi before he looks at Tuskishima again. "I have a leg I can take off. I can definitely reach your stupid grin with that." Pleased with himself, he nods and turns around to return to where Kageyama is.

Sugawara pats him on his shoulder. "You make a good older brother, Hinata."

* * *

><p>That Wednesday, instead of going straight to the gym, Hinata rushes towards the main gate after changing his clothes. After he turns the final corner, he immediately notices a spot of bright red hair already waiting there.<p>

When he reaches her, Natsu scolds him. "Nii-chan, you're late! I've been waiting for ages! What if a kidnapper had shown up?"

"Eh?" Hinata puts his hands on his little sister's shoulders and glares up and down the road in front of the school. "Shouldn't your teacher have waited with you?"

"They had to go back to school," Natsu answers, looking up at her brother. As soon as Hinata releases his grip on her, she starts bouncing enthusiastically, grabbing his arm and pulling at it. "Hey, hey, Nii-chan! Show me the volleyball! Show me where you play!"

"Right away, milady!" Hinata wriggles out of Natsu's hold and instead takes her hand, walking her across the school grounds towards the gym. There, he crouches down in front of her.

"Ok, now listen well, Natsu. We're going to be playing volleyball in there and that means there will be balls flying around. So as long as we're busy with practice, you're going to have to sit still on the bench, okay?"

Natsu nods enthusiastically. "Yes!"

"Promise?" Hinata holds out his pinky and Natsu gladly links their fingers.

"Promise!"

"Okay, good." He takes her hand in his again and slides the door open. "Hi everyone! We're-" But before he can finishes saying _we're here_ two faces slide into their field of vision, effectively blocking the entrance.

"Hey! Hinata-imouto-chan!"

"Hello there!"

Shocked by the sudden loud welcome Nishinoya and Tanaka are giving her, Natsu jumps and hides behind her brother's back. When she peeks around it, she sees another boy dragging the earlier two away.

"I told you guys not to intimidate the poor kid! Get to warming up!"

Natsu blinks at the sight. Then she hears someone chuckle closer by and feels a tug on her arm. She follows her brother into the gym.

Immediately to her right is a boy crouching down, just like her brother often does, and he smiles at her in a friendly way. He has a nice, soft smile. He looks up at her brother to confirm something before he talks to her.

"Natsu-chan, wasn't it?" Natsu follows his eyes and notices that her brother has a wide smile on his face as well. Hinata nods.

"Hi, Natsu-chan!" the friendly boy with the light hair says to her. "I'm your big brother's teammate. My name is Sugawara Koushi. You can call me Suga if you want." He cocks his head slightly and Natsu nods wordlessly before she shakes the shyness and smiles at him too.

"Nice to meet you, Suga-nii-san!"

"Okay, I'm going to warm up, Hinata, you can sit her down by the drinks if you want." It takes Natsu a second to realise that Sugawara meant her brother and not her by 'Hinata', but then she's being led away as the other boy walks over to the rest of the team.

"Nii-chan, can I play too later?" she asks when she is sitting down on the bench, coat off and her brother in the middle of untying her shoelaces. "I wanna play too."

"Maybe afterwards, okay? If mum's late picking us up." Hinata sets his sister's shoes aside and pats her ankles. "Now sit still and watch, okay? Your big brother's going to show you how it's done!"

* * *

><p>"Asahi! Why do you keep missing?!" Daichi shouts out, frustrated after the ace completely messes up a spike for the umpteenth time.<p>

"I'm sorry! My hair keeps coming loose and it gets into my eyes!"

"Then cut it short!"

Natsu watches as the boy – man? – with the beard reties his hair and protests weakly. As soon as he lets go of the elastic band holding his hair back in a bun, some strands at the front escape.

Before, during the drink break in the practice, the teammates had gathered close to Natsu, but she'd heard Suga-nii-san tell that man to not come close to her because he would scare her. She wasn't sure why.

The two that had greeted her as soon as she had shown up weren't scary at all anymore either. Actually, they were really nice, because they'd promised to buy her ice cream if she came over again. When they'd announced that, she'd asked her brother whether that was okay, because their mother always told her not to take sweets from strangers. That had prompted the two of them to tell her that she should consider them her big brothers too. Nii-chan had said it was fine, so she happily thanked them for the offer.

But now the apparently-scary-but-not-scary man has missed the ball again and the other boy is shouting at him, so Natsu concludes that that was bad. She decides she should help out.

Even though her brother has told her to sit still so she isn't hit by any balls, she hops off of the bench and walks over. There aren't any balls in the air anyway, so that is safe, right?

She reaches up and tugs on the man's shirt. "Onii-san? Can I braid your hair?"

"Ah! Natsu! I told you to stay on the bench!" Hinata comes rushing over, but Asahi doesn't register the middle blocker's words. Instead, he stares down at the small child clinging onto his shirt and then looks around in amazement, his eyes finally settling on Daichi's.

"She's not scared of me," he utters and looks back down. There, a pair of brown eyes is still staring up at him.

"Can I?" the girl asks again and Asahi lowers himself to her eye-level.

"B-but… I don't… why?" he inquires, nervously brushing the loose strands of hair back.

"Cause it's pretty!" Natsu happily answers and then she adds: "My mother taught me how to do it, so I can make sure it stays put! I'm really good at it!"

"Ah, uhm…" Asahi looks to Sugawara for help. "Uhm, can…"

"Just go on," Daichi answers instead, "but do it on the side of the court so we can continue practice."

"You might never meet such a brave child again!" Nishinoya adds, laughing. "She's got more guts than you, Shouyou!"

Ignoring the older's protests, Asahi answers the younger of the Hinata siblings. "Well… then, uhm, Na-natsu-chan, that would be nice." The little girl grins and grabs his hand, pulling on his arm to get him over to the bench too.

"A-asahi-san! You don't have to!" Hinata tells him as soon as he has straightened up, but Asahi just rubs his neck with his free hand and smiles nervously.

"It's okay, Hinata. To be honest, I am quite flattered."

Natsu tries seating Asahi on the bench, but even with her standing up, she can't reach his head properly. He is just too tall. So to make up for that, she has him sit down on the floor as she stands behind him.

"Now you just have to sit really still," she carefully explains, just like her mum always does when she French braids Natsu's short locks back. She takes the elastic band out of his hair and rolls it onto her wrist as her little hands quickly go to work.

"You know," she says, "your hair really is very pretty!" Natsu likes long hair. She wants long hair herself, but her mum says that if she wants long hair, she has to comb through the knots every day and that hurts, so she'd rather keep it short.

"P-pretty?" Asahi looks around and his hair falls out of her hands. He is immediately reprimanded by the six-year-old.

"Look forward! I can't do it otherwise!"

"Natsu!" Hinata yells from the court. "Be polite to Asahi-san!"

"It's okay!" Asahi assures Hinata once more. In all honesty, he is just overjoyed that a child is actually _talking_ to him, whether it is in a polite way or not. Natsu can push him around as much as she wants to.

Soon enough, Natsu finishes braiding his hair back and snaps the elastic band around the end of the braid. "All done!" she tells him, smiling brightly when he turns around and thanks her before getting up off the floor. He hesitantly stretches out his hand and is amazed when Natsu sits still as he pat s her head.

"Thank you, Natsu-chan. Now can you wait here until practice is over?"

Natsu nods and hops onto the bench. "Yup!"

* * *

><p>For the rest of practice, Natsu listen's to her brother's order and stays in her spot on the bench. Even though she doesn't really get how the game works, it's fun watching the older boys running, jumping about and hitting the volleyballs.<p>

After a while, the one that was shouting at the long-haired onii-san earlier calls all the others over. He talks to them for a little bit, though Natsu can't hear what he's saying, and then the group breaks up and most of the boys trail behind her brother.

"Natsu-chan, thank you for helping Asahi with his hair," Suga-nii-san tells her, crouching in front of her like he did before and petting her on her head. "You did a great job."

At the compliment, Natsu smiles broadly and nods her head. "I told you I could do it!"

"Woah, she really is Hinata's sister, isn't she? Look at that smile."

"Sugawara-san, is it okay to leave her here for a bit? I'll go change really quickly." Hinata wants to get ready for when his mum picks them up, but at the same time, he feels a bit awkward asking the others to look after his sister. Sugawara, however, just nods and smiles, so Hinata quickly thanks him and runs off to the club room.

Meanwhile, Natsu has noticed one of her brother's teammates being a bit… different from the others. So far, everyone has been all smiles towards her, but there is one boy that's keeping his distance and is just standing there, a frown on his face.

"Noya-nii," she starts asking, pulling on his shirt, "who's that?" She points at the blond, even though she knows her mum always says it's not polite to point at someone.

"That's Tsukishima!" he enlightens her and he brushes his hand through her hair once again. Tanaka-nii continues when the libero decides that's enough of an explanation.

"He's a big j- ah… grump? So just leave him alone, okay?"

"Hmmm." Even though he said that, Natsu keeps staring at the tallest of the team. When he turns to look at her and meets her eyes, he clicks his tongue and turns away again. That's what makes Natsu decide to go over.

The rest of the team is immediately both in a panic and frozen to the ground at the same time.

Once Tsukishima glances at her again, he notices her approach. The eyes behind those glasses follow her as she steps closer to him, but Tsukishima doesn't move from where he's standing. Considering it's Hinata's sister, she'd probably just follow him to wherever he relocated. It isn't worth bothering.

As soon as she reaches him however, he turns his head away again. He ignores the tugs on his shirt, the incessant "hey, hey"s she's giving him to capture his attention.

"Hey glasses-onii-san!" Natsu tries again, pulling on the boy's wrist now instead and finally she gets a reaction.

"Don't call me that!" he snaps at her and she sucks in a breath at his tone. Suddenly, the whole gym goes quiet as the rest of the team collectively holds their breath in anticipation of Natsu's reaction. Tsukishima starts to think he might have overdone it. She is just a kid after all, even if she's a mini-Hinata. She just stares at him with her eyes open wide, as if the shock hasn't set in completely.

That's when the highly energetic older brother comes back into the gym.

"HEY! WHAT DID YOU DO, TSUKISHIMA?!" is the first thing that comes out of his mouth and he starts stomping over, as well as stomping goes with one plastic leg.

Suddenly, Natsu lets go of Tsukishima's wrist and turns to run over to her worried brother. Hinata immediately stretches his arms open wide to invite her into a hug, thinking his sister needs to be consoled after whatever Tsukishima did to her.

But before he can close his arms around her, Natsu ducks and lifts his left leg up, throwing Hinata off balance and toppling him over backwards. He manages to catch himself instead of hitting his head on the ground.

Then he hears two snaps and feels the weight of his leg decrease and he realises he shouldn't have let Natsu play with his prosthetic all the time.

"Natsu! Give that back!" he yells as the girl runs off with half a leg under her arm, giggling loudly and causing all his teammates to look on with their mouths wide open in surprise. "Natsu! I can't walk without that! Give it back!"

While he calls that, he hears peals of laughter behind him and glances over his shoulder to make sure none of the other Karasuno playes have seen… _that._ They wouldn't let him live it down if they did.

Kageyama comes over and offers him a hand to help him up off the floor. Hinata gladly takes it and lets Kageyama wrap an arm around his chest to keep him standing. He looks at Natsu again, who has walked over to Tsukishima now, the prosthesis still in her arms. Though Tsukishima is holding in his laughter, still strangely considerate of Hinata when it comes to his disability, there's one thing Hinata doesn't want to happen.

"Don't give that to him, Natsu! Just bring it back! Now, please!"

Natsu ignores her brother. She wasn't planning on giving nii-chan's leg to the grumpy boy anyway! Still holding on to her treasure, she puts the prosthesis on the ground and then reaches for the blond's hand again.

Tsukishima feels a small hand pat the back of his hand several times before Natsu's fingers let him go. He raises his hand and stares at the brightly coloured butterfly sticker now stuck to his skin.

Proud of herself, Natsu nods and smiles. She earned that butterfly sticker at school last week and when she'd come home she'd immediately stuck it to her brother's leg, in between the other prizes. This one is the best though, because it's really pretty and really big.

"Don't be sad, okay?" she tells the boy and she tries to remember his name because he said he didn't want her to call him glass-onii-san. The other boy had said his name before, right? What was it again? Tsu… something. _Oh well._ "Tsucchan!"

Tsukishima doesn't object to the new name she's given him. Instead, his gaze switches from the sticker on his hand, to the girl looking up at him with a bright smile and back. She's trying to cheer him up, he realises and the absurdness of it – of Hinata's baby sister cheering him up by peeling a butterfly sticker off her brother's prosthesis and sticking it onto his hand instead – actually manages to drag the corners of his mouth up.

He bends his knees and puts his hands under the girl's armpits to lift her up onto his hip. Natsu lets out a happy giggle and clings onto his arms as he speaks. "Thank you, Natsu-chan," he tells her, "If you smile like that, I won't be sad anymore, I promise."

* * *

><p>Over the next week, nobody lets Hinata forget that he's the type of adoring older brother that lets his sister put <em>stickers<em> all over his stuff. Tsukishima snickers whenever it's brought up, but at the same time he fervently wishes none of his teammates ever find out he stored that butterfly away safely as soon as he got home that day.


End file.
